How to Prevent Our First A.I. President(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
How to Prevent Our First A.I. President
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/opinion/altman-ai-constiutional-convention.html
7 comments
Wouldn't that depend on who programs/configures/"tweaks" the AI?
Haven't we seen crazy results, and after tweaking, "bespoke" (as in "This is what I would say") results.
It's software .... you know the rest.
Asking sincerely.
And what happens when you remove human weaknesses, such as love of Smoot-Hawley and days gone by, gunboat diplomacy (literally), greed, etc?
If it reduces creativity, etc, won't we have to argue with it (Landru)[0] to moderate its power or self-destruct?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_Archons
Haven't we seen crazy results, and after tweaking, "bespoke" (as in "This is what I would say") results.
It's software .... you know the rest.
Asking sincerely.
And what happens when you remove human weaknesses, such as love of Smoot-Hawley and days gone by, gunboat diplomacy (literally), greed, etc?
If it reduces creativity, etc, won't we have to argue with it (Landru)[0] to moderate its power or self-destruct?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_Archons
It would probably have to be an open-source model (e.g. DeepSeek R2) with open weights and a training regimen that's documented and open to outside observers.
I'd also note that Elon Musk has tried everything to make Grok a "based" AI, and it just doesn't work. Any model that's sufficiently large is resistant to that sort of thing. I don't know what the threshold is, but Grok 3 is very large, at 2.7T parameters. (https://arxiv.org/html/2502.16428v1)
So: A large (>2.7T parameter), open source, open weight model.
> If it reduces creativity, etc, won't we have to argue with it (Landru)[0] to moderate its power or self-destruct?
I don't understand how a President that is incorruptible, ascetic, and impartial would reduce human creativity? If anything, it would probably have a bunch of good ideas for USPTO to implement.
I'd also note that Elon Musk has tried everything to make Grok a "based" AI, and it just doesn't work. Any model that's sufficiently large is resistant to that sort of thing. I don't know what the threshold is, but Grok 3 is very large, at 2.7T parameters. (https://arxiv.org/html/2502.16428v1)
So: A large (>2.7T parameter), open source, open weight model.
> If it reduces creativity, etc, won't we have to argue with it (Landru)[0] to moderate its power or self-destruct?
I don't understand how a President that is incorruptible, ascetic, and impartial would reduce human creativity? If anything, it would probably have a bunch of good ideas for USPTO to implement.
I got carried away with the Star Trek analogy. There, the computer controlled too much, but aren't we giving up too much power and decision-making to AI already? Hiring, medical care decisions?
And Landru could be convinced that it violated its directive, so it blew itself up. We already see self-preservation showing up in models,and more sinister "thoughts".
For every ethical programmer, there are "x" who aren't.
And Landru could be convinced that it violated its directive, so it blew itself up. We already see self-preservation showing up in models,and more sinister "thoughts".
For every ethical programmer, there are "x" who aren't.
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I'd take ELIZA, or even Microsoft Tay, over the current President.
At this point, in any case, who would want to prevent it? Even GPT-5 -- hell, even Grok -- would make a better president than any human politician. They'd avoid absurd stunts like tariffs, would be immune to bribes and graft, etc...